Caught on camera pushing out the lies

There was much laughter in Hong Kong diplomatic circles at the weekend about a newly published US intelligence report that confirmed that China had NOT interfered in any way with the recent American election.

US leaders had earlier said, in front of cameras, that the exact same intelligence study had confirmed that China HAD definitely interfered. Clearly they hadn't expected it to be published.

The incident now exists forever as documentary proof that US leaders tell flat-out lies to the world to push an anti-China narrative. This will come as an enormous surprise ... to absolutely nobody.

Despite the US-China relationship being the world's top news story at the moment, only one mainstream Western reporter, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, produced a news item reporting the incident.

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A t-shirt with the slogan "Target of Poverty Alleviation" is now for sale on Taobao, according to StarBoyHK, a popular Twitter voice. "I'm so getting one of these ... and walking into the Hong Kong Gucci and Louis Vuitton stores with it," he said.

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A math-challenged reader who started typing "what percentage" into Google was given a suggestion of what is apparently a common ending to that question: "What percentage of 100 is 50?" She said: "Even I can do that one."

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This columnist criticized our leaders' dreadful PR skills in speeches and a TV interview on Friday. Instead of using words like "patriotic", the decision to make the Legislative Council more executive-led and only partly elected should be described as it really is: a return to the British Hong Kong system of governance. "The truth is that Legco is being re-British-ified," I said.

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Almost twice as many Lamborghinis were sold in China than in Italy, the European carmaker reported recently. Makers of the investment bankers' favorite car will focus on serving China in future. Communism ain't what it used to be.

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Top legal mind Henry Litton slammed Australia on Thursday for joining a "sinister scheme" to "bring total chaos to Hong Kong, with the aim of causing shame and humiliation to China". Western governments and media were whitewashing violent insurgents as "pro-democracy activists" Litton said, writing in a public policy journal. "Social progress does not involve firebombs in the streets."

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The new police bill in the UK is a huge problem for British news groups like Reuters and the BBC in Hong Kong. They have labelled Hong Kong's security law as a "Draconian". Yet the UK's law is much harsher, giving UK police powers to prevent "even static single-person events that officers deem too loud or to be causing a nuisance", I was told yesterday by Walter De Haviland, the pen name of a popular blogger.

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Archers with bow-and-arrow sets have been sighted in the Myanmar protests, as they were in Hong Kong's 2019 unrest. Both groups quote Katniss the archer from The Hunger Games, a hit novel. But Kelvin Tan Fong Kee issued a grim warning via Twitter yesterday: "Her side wins in the books, but in real life the side with the automatic weapons wins."

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Staff at Capo Group, a rather good chain of Italian restaurants in Hong Kong, are reportedly asking all customers to use the LeaveHomeSafe app, after one diner gave his name as "Mickey Mouse" and his contact details as "Disneyland".

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